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At Energy Capital Ventures®, we view carbon dioxide not only as an emission to capture and contain, but as a strategic resource to harness. For decades, the carbon conversation has focused almost exclusively on storage: capture it, compress it, and sequester it deep underground. That remains indispensable, but it also leaves carbon stranded as a cost center—something managed rather than monetized.
In 2025, the paradigm is shifting. Carbon dioxide is increasingly being redefined as a feedstock, a molecule that can be transformed into fuels, chemicals, and building materials central to the global economy. This evolution from liability to asset lies at the core of the Green Molecules® thesis. It offers a practical pathway to decarbonization that does not depend on building entirely new systems, but instead leverages existing infrastructure, demand patterns, and industrial processes to create value while reducing emissions.
The early decades of carbon capture were dominated by storage, in part because the economics of utilization were unproven. Yet utilization brings something storage alone cannot: market pull. If captured CO₂ becomes the basis of commercial products, it generates its own revenue stream, offsetting capture costs while displacing fossil feedstocks. Fuels made from CO₂ can reduce reliance on petroleum, chemicals from CO₂ can substitute for hydrocarbons, and concretes that incorporate CO₂ can lock carbon away for centuries while strengthening materials. In this sense, CO₂ utilization is not merely an environmental gesture. It is an economic strategy to embed carbon circularity into the products that underpin everyday life. The global emissions challenge is thus reframed: rather than asking only how to bury carbon, we can now ask how to use it.
The leading pathways for CO₂ utilization fall into three overlapping domains: fuels, chemicals, and building materials. Each is advancing at its own pace, but together they sketch the outline of a circular carbon economy. Fuels made from CO₂, often in combination with clean hydrogen, are gaining traction in sectors that cannot easily electrify. Methanol and synthetic methane can flow through existing infrastructure. Sustainable aviation fuel derived from CO₂ is now the subject of long-term offtake contracts with major airlines, supported by mandates in Europe and credits in the United States. While costs remain higher than conventional fuels, policies like the Section 45Q and 45Z credits, along with California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, are steadily closing the gap.
Chemicals and polymers represent another frontier. Advances in catalysis and biology are enabling the transformation of CO₂ into solvents, intermediates, and plastics. Recent demonstrations of polypropylene made from CO₂ illustrate the potential for waste carbon to be embedded directly into high-volume consumer materials. Beyond plastics, pathways to produce methanol, acetic acid, olefins, and polyurethanes from CO₂ are rapidly maturing. These are trillion-dollar global markets, and the ability to substitute fossil hydrocarbons with recycled carbon has implications not just for emissions, but for industrial competitiveness and supply security.
Building materials offer perhaps the most immediate scale. Cement production alone accounts for roughly 8 percent of global emissions. By injecting CO₂ into curing processes or mineralizing it into aggregates, producers can store carbon permanently while improving material performance. Several technologies are already deployed at commercial plants, with procurement standards in the United States and Europe beginning to favor low-carbon concrete. The construction industry’s sheer scale means it could ultimately absorb gigatons of CO₂ annually, making this one of the most consequential applications of utilization.
The economics of CO₂ utilization are being shaped, and in some cases constrained, by a complex set of policy signals. In the United States, the Section 45Q tax credit remains the most visible mechanism. For utilization pathways, the credit provides roughly $60 per ton of CO₂ used in fuels or products. That support can help reduce the effective cost of carbon feedstock, but it is not sufficient on its own to close the cost gap between CO₂-derived products and fossil incumbents. Developers must still contend with capital intensity, technology risk, and uncertainty around long-term eligibility and verification of “productive use.”
The Section 45Z Clean Fuel Production Credit, available through 2027, adds a short-term boost for CO₂-derived fuels by rewarding producers based on measured lifecycle carbon intensity. This technology-neutral structure creates a potential near-term advantage for e-fuels that combine captured CO₂ with low-carbon hydrogen. At the same time, the compressed timeline of 45Z creates pressure for projects to reach commercial readiness quickly, and questions remain around how lifecycle accounting will be conducted in practice—particularly for fuels relying on grid electricity or imported hydrogen.
At the state level, Low Carbon Fuel Standards in California, Oregon, and British Columbia translate avoided emissions into tradable credits, often valued at $70–$150 per ton. These programs have provided important early revenue for CO₂-based fuels, but they are geographically limited and subject to volatility as credit prices fluctuate with supply and demand. Europe has taken a more explicit approach, incorporating recycled carbon fuels into the Renewable Energy Directive. While this inclusion creates a compliance market, it also raises questions around how utilization will be benchmarked against conventional renewables and how trade flows will be treated under different national schemes.
Taken together, these policies are helping to establish utilization as a legitimate pathway alongside storage, but they do not eliminate the structural challenges. Incentives are fragmented, timelines are compressed, and verification standards are still evolving. For developers and investors, the result is a market with clear near-term tailwinds but lingering uncertainty around scalability and durability of support.
At Energy Capital Ventures®, our Green Molecules® thesis is built on the recognition that the future of energy will be defined as much by resilience and economics as by technology. Molecules are essential: they carry energy, store value, and connect to the infrastructure and industrial processes that underpin the modern economy. Carbon dioxide is the most abundant and familiar molecule in this equation, but it has historically been treated only as waste. For us, the central question is: which companies can flip that paradigm and turn CO₂ into an input rather than a liability?
When we evaluate carbon utilization opportunities, we look for three characteristics. First, technical credibility and differentiation—a platform that can move beyond the lab to industrial deployment, leveraging an approach that offers a step-change in cost, scalability, or flexibility. Second, market adjacency—technologies that do not demand the creation of entirely new markets but instead plug into trillion-dollar existing ones: fuels, plastics, concrete. Third, infrastructure compatibility—solutions that align with the assets, logistics, and operating models of natural gas utilities and heavy industry. Our goal is not just to invest in science projects, but in companies capable of shifting industrial practice at scale.
Two of our portfolio companies illustrate how different technical approaches can achieve the same strategic goal: converting carbon dioxide into value. Cemvita, based in Houston, exemplifies the power of biology to reimagine industrial chemistry. Their vision is to replace the smoke-belching refinery with a living system. By engineering microorganisms to consume CO₂ and produce fuels or specialty chemicals, Cemvita is essentially building biorefineries where emissions become feedstock. This is not a distant dream—the company has already demonstrated production of bio-ethylene from CO₂, a molecule central to plastics and packaging, and has entered into offtake agreements for sustainable aviation fuels. What makes Cemvita compelling is not only the breadth of products their platform can target, but the efficiency that biology brings. Rather than requiring extreme heat, pressure, or exotic catalysts, their microbes operate at ambient conditions, with enzymes doing the heavy lifting of breaking down CO₂ and rebuilding it into valuable hydrocarbons. In this way, Cemvita reduces both the energy and capital intensity of carbon utilization. More importantly, their biology-based platform is flexible: the same engineered organisms can be tuned to make fuels for aviation, solvents for chemicals, or intermediates for industry. This adaptability aligns with our thesis that winning carbontech companies must serve multiple multi-billion-dollar markets while being anchored in real industrial demand.
Where Cemvita leverages biology, Enadyne advances physics and catalysis. The company is pioneering cold plasma reactors that combine CO₂ and methane to produce liquid fuels and chemical precursors. This approach addresses two greenhouse gases simultaneously: carbon dioxide and methane, which is over twenty times more potent as a warming agent. By activating these molecules in a non-thermal plasma, Enadyne drives reactions at much lower temperatures and pressures than conventional reforming. The result is a process that can be modular, efficient, and compatible with distributed deployment. For industries with waste gas streams—landfills, biogas plants, or industrial sites—Enadyne’s reactors offer a way to turn waste into saleable products on-site, cutting emissions while creating new revenue. Strategically, this aligns with utilities and industrial partners seeking not just to manage their emissions footprint, but to monetize it. Enadyne’s emphasis on modularity is also significant. Instead of massive billion-dollar facilities, their units can be scaled incrementally, de-risking capital requirements and accelerating adoption across a wider range of sites. In many ways, they are bringing the distributed energy model—smaller, flexible, replicable units—into the carbon utilization space.
Taken together, Cemvita and Enadyne illustrate the diversity of solutions required for CO₂ utilization to scale. Cemvita embodies biology’s ability to re-write the rules of industrial chemistry, making living systems the engine of carbon conversion. Enadyne demonstrates how physics and catalysis can be re-engineered for efficiency, enabling a modular approach to emissions valorization. For Energy Capital Ventures, backing both is not redundant, but complementary. Each addresses different segments of the CO₂ challenge, and together they showcase the breadth of pathways that can make carbon circularity real. By investing across biology and catalysis, we position ourselves to capture value regardless of which pathway scales fastest, while reinforcing our core thesis: CO₂ is not just waste to manage, but a molecule to use.
Beyond our portfolio, Chicago is emerging as a center of gravity for carbon utilization innovation. Rise Reforming is developing modular systems that reform CO₂ and methane into syngas, creating a platform for fuels and chemicals with a reduced emissions profile. C+U is pursuing pathways to turn CO₂ into polymers, targeting markets that demand sustainable alternatives to conventional plastics. Aether Fuels, meanwhile, has partnered with GTI Energy in suburban Chicago to advance its Aurora platform, which converts waste carbon streams into sustainable liquid fuels with improved yields and lower capital intensity.
While not ECV portfolio companies, these ventures underscore the depth of regional ecosystems that are producing globally relevant carbontech solutions. Chicago’s role is not accidental: the region combines world-class research institutions, a legacy of heavy industry and energy infrastructure, and a growing pool of climate-focused entrepreneurs. That mix makes it a natural testbed for technologies that need both technical credibility and industrial partners willing to trial solutions at scale. At the same time, Chicago’s emerging carbontech community faces the same challenges as the broader sector—developing cost-competitive pathways, navigating fragmented policy frameworks, and building early demand signals that can sustain growth beyond pilot projects.
The rise of CO₂ utilization carries different but interconnected implications across the energy and industrial value chain. For utilities, captured CO₂ streams present an opportunity to evolve beyond compliance-driven capture and into value creation. Instead of treating CO₂ as a waste stream to be sequestered at cost, utilities can begin to integrate utilization pathways into their operations—selling CO₂ as an input to fuels, chemicals, or construction materials. This positions them not just as energy suppliers but as molecule suppliers, offering low-carbon feedstocks alongside natural gas and electricity. It also reframes carbon capture investments from pure regulatory expense into potential regulated asset bases with monetizable outputs.
For industrial operators, utilization offers both risk mitigation and competitive advantage. Sectors such as cement, steel, and refining face mounting pressure to reduce emissions, and CO₂ utilization technologies allow them to transform liabilities into product lines. Embedding CO₂ in concrete, producing methanol or solvents from emissions, or converting flue gas into polymers all provide tangible ways to align with net-zero goals while opening new revenue streams. These companies are also among the most likely first movers, since they already control concentrated CO₂ streams and have commercial incentives to decarbonize their value chains. For infrastructure players, the emergence of utilization markets implies new demand for pipelines, logistics, and midstream services to connect sources of CO₂ with sites of conversion. In many cases, these projects will overlap with storage infrastructure, giving midstream operators a role in building out the backbone of a carbon economy.
Finally, for investors and policymakers, the implications are both opportunity and responsibility. The markets at stake—fuels, plastics, cement—are measured in trillions, meaning even modest penetration by CO₂-derived products could create enormous enterprise value. But investors must distinguish between science experiments and scalable businesses, focusing on technologies that align with industrial scale, policy frameworks, and infrastructure realities. Policymakers, meanwhile, must continue to refine incentive structures, lifecycle accounting, and procurement standards to reward real emissions reductions while avoiding greenwashing. Together, these stakeholder groups will determine whether CO₂ utilization remains a promising niche or grows into a central pillar of the Green Molecules® economy.
The story of CO₂ is evolving. Once regarded solely as a waste stream to be managed, it is increasingly being tested as a resource that can be put to productive use. Utilization creates the possibility of circular value chains where carbon is captured, converted, and embedded into products that already underpin global markets. The Green Molecules® thesis acknowledges this potential and places CO₂ within the broader set of molecules—alongside hydrogen, ammonia, and renewable natural gas—that could contribute to a more resilient and economically grounded energy system.
From Enadyne’s plasma reactors to Cemvita’s microbial platforms, early demonstrations are underway that highlight both the opportunities and the challenges of this transition. Utilization is not a panacea, nor will it displace the need for storage, but it represents a pathway that could balance emissions management with market creation. For stakeholders—utilities, industrial operators, investors, and policymakers—the task ahead is to determine where CO₂ as a feedstock can compete on cost, scale, and reliability. Success will not be measured by ambition alone, but by the ability to align technology, infrastructure, and economics in ways that endure.
